Richard Dansky's Blog, page 27

In Which I Eye A Giant Book On Baseball, Warily

 One of my spring rituals involves reading.

OK, to be fair, most of my rituals involve reading. Most of my life involves reading, one way or another. When  foldedfish   crashed with me briefly in Boston back in the early 90s, the first thing I told him was "any flat surface you can find that isn't covered in books is yours." If memory serves, he didn't find too many.

But the springtime ritual involves reading Baseball Prospectus. I'm a stone baseball fan and I make no bones about it. When I discovered deeper, more analytical ways to look at the game, I was ecstatic, though by no means could I be called a "stathead". There's still too much residual love for the heady days of Larry Bowa at short for the Phillies in me for me ever to go to a strictly WARP3-based fandom, and the analyst who notoriously told Jayson Stark that Phillies fans cheering a no-hitter were cheering the wrong thing just made me sad. That's one of the glories of baseball to me - the fact that it supports so many ways of looking at it, most of which do nothing but add to your enjoyment of the game. The heady math of Joe Maddon's substitution patterns to ensure a platoon advantage in 63% of all Tampa at-bats last year? Great stuff. The swarming legions of the Rays' uber-utility man horde climbing the walls of Yankee Stadium to pillage the fattest of cats? Equally great. And as a fan, I feel lucky to be watching baseball at a time when all of these narratives are available to me, to read and enjoy.

Which, I suppose, is one of the reasons I always anxiously await the arrival of BP every year. Heady with stats, heavy on the snark, it's a buffet of all the different ways to enjoy the game (one of those good buffets, mind you, where there's a sneezeguard over the salad bar, and they're constantly changing stuff out to make sure it's fresh, and nobody swipes a fried cheese stick through the 'nanner pudding just to see how it would taste). And normally I read the massive thing cover to cover as soon as it arrives.

This year, not so much. Oh, I've poked at it, read chapters and chunks and enjoyed them. But the urge to devour's gone this year. Perhaps it's because, after 16 years of wandering in the wilderness, I finally won my second league championship in my long-time fantasy league. (To provide some perspective, the last time I won, it was because of a late-season pickup of guys like Steve Avery and Craig Biggio. The Expos were in first place, behind ace starter Ken Hill. And people knew who Steve Jeltz was.) Maybe it's just because I'm getting pulled in so many other directions this year - work and reviews to do and stories to write and all sorts of other time-consuming goodness that doesn't allow me to cocoon for a couple of days immersing myself in crafty left-handers who are going to get the living bejesus smacked out of them by AA hitters and the like.

Or maybe I'm just ready for the season to start - I picked the book up much later than usual this year, and after a false start where I accidentally ended up with a second copy of last year's book - and I'm ready for the real stories, the ones that unfold on the field.

Play ball.

Read Stuff By Me!

 Because I'm, like, insecure and want to be told that my writing is pretty and stuff. Or because I'm insomniacal and want to post twice while I'm waiting for the sorbet fixings to cool down appropriately. Take your pick.

At Tainted Tea, there's "There Is No Bird".
At storySouth, you can find "And the Rain Fell Through Her Fingers".
At Sleeping Hedgehog, there's reviews of The Return of the Dapper Men and Deborah Painter's biography of the estimable Forrest J. Ackerman.
At Green Man Review, there's reviews of Gemma Files'  A Book of Tongues  and Philip Nutman's Cities of Night .
And in case you missed it, last month's Storytellers Unplugged Essay can be found here, exhorting you to read nothing ever again because This Essay Sucks. 

And that's all I've got for the moment, though if I can catch a break I've got another Reb Palache story to finish, and another one about the end of the universe by means of a very special vending machine, and then...who's Reb Palache? Sorry, that's another story.  

A random thought on modern masculinity

 I'm not a big believer in the cult of fake masculinity that seems to have inundated certain areas of discourse. I don't believe in manning up, I'm not a fan of overwired man caves or the notion that we need a different word for "manscaping", and I refer to my "man suit" as my skin. Because, well, that's what it is. All of these ridiculous attempts at reclaiming an imaginary heritage of machismo are I think, sops to the fact that so many jobs today involve nothing more physically strenuous than typing, attempts to reaffirm for ourselves (for certain loose values of "ourselves") that should the situation require it, we could still draw upon our latent manliness, slap on a horned helmet, and lead a viking raiding ship against the cyborg Nazi zombies of Mars. There's an insecurity there, one that ad agencies and media conglomerates are eager to fill by pouring endless drivel about being manly by wearing the right smell or having the right lawn tractor (for a patch of grass the size of a postage stamp that you don't actually want to spend the time mowing anyway) or drinking the right light beer. 

All of which is, of course, idiotic. One suspects that something truer to the quintessential nature of masculinity would be about drinking whatever you damn well please, not about being shamed into ordering one light beer over another because an impossibly hot bartendress mocked you for having the wrong sunglasses. It's a false notion of masculinity, carefully cultivated and sold and having about as much to do with the real thing, whatever that might be, as it does to, say, good-tasting beer. 

All that being said, a week or so ago I found myself at an excellent cocktail bar with a bunch of men who happen to be friends and coworkers, folks whose opinions I greatly respect. We ordered drinks. We talked. Some of it was about work. Some of it wasn't. The complimentary peanuts got eaten. All of it was convivial. And it was very much effortlessly that sort of masculine moment that I am so damn sick of having whiny announcers and flaccid talk radio hosts and damaged forum commenters try to force on the public to make up for their own lack of self-confidence.

Come to think of it, that - confidence - may be the key. All of us knew we belonged there. All us appreciated it. And none of us felt the need to prove a damn thing. Now put that in your man-suit and smoke it.

Random thought in the wake of GDC

What resonates from GDC isn't the talks, unless you're one of those lucky folks who saw Brian Moriarty work his magic. (I wasn't. A meeting for the Game Narrative Summit ran late, I was five minutes late, and I decided I'd rather not go in than see only a partial performance. Yes, he is that good.)

It's also not the parties. The parties are wonderful, don't get me wrong. Lots of very conscientious people put a great deal of effort into ensuring that the shindigs are indeed diggable by shins and other body parts, to the where the sheer profusion of options for conviviality is staggering. But the late nights and the loud noise and the colored lights and the interesting variations on hors d'oeuvres and jello shots can get bewildering.

What makes a GDC, if you're lucky, is the people and the conversations. Sitting and talking in an empty speakers lounge about what the Kinnect is going to mean for game narrative and storytelling. Learning new board games - and the reason folks think they're interesting - from respected peers at ridiculous hours of the night. Talking to students whom you've watched spend ten minutes and half a beer working up the nerve to introduce themselves to people who are obviously Real Pros (TM), ad the enthusiasm overtakes the potential freaking. Coming offstage after giving a talk and being hit with real, substantive questions, the kind that open conversations instead of closing them off. Watching convos drift out of a room after a round table and drift enthusiastically down the hall without skipping a beat. Catching up with dear friends not seen in too long, and indulging in bad Brooklyn accents with some of them over piles of dead laminated mobsters. Introducing talented folks to other talented folks and seeing the random moments of intersection turn into connection. Stuff like that.

Some of the takeaway, I can quantify. Great talks from Skaff Elias and Jeremy Bernstein. Interesting insight into character building from Pixar. And of course more where that came from. But it's the unquantifiable that holds as much value for me, the chance to swim in that sea of incredibly talented people because of the coincidence of our shared passion for games, and that's where the enduring memories come from.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPad.

Oh Look. Writing.

 GDC hijinks later, I promise. But in the meantime, there's a short piece called "There Is No Bird" up at Tainted Tea, and a review of a biography of Forrest Ackerman over at Sleeping Hedgehog. Oh, and Night-Mantled: The Best of Wily Writers is now available from Amazon, with my story "Small Cold Things" in it. 

And now back to my regularly scheduled packing.

8 Rules for Improving The Oscars (Which I Did Not Watch)

 Separate category for "Best Picture About Rich, Emotionally Repressed People From the UK". Films about poor people from the UK who may or may not be emotionally repressed can also be nominated in this category, but only if they feature full frontal male nudity to demonstrate how very serious they are.All television commentators must announce at the beginning of any broadcast in which they pontificate on the likely winners how many of the nominees they've actually seen. Less than half in any category they're yammering about, and they get hit in the head with a raw flounder on air repeatedly until they stop talking.One sensible six year old child will be stationed on the red carpet to point and laugh at any Oscar dresses that have no business being worn outside the Glen Larson version of Buck Rogers.At regular intervals, the audience will be reminded that Bruce Vilanch did in fact help write The Star Wars Holiday Special.A gong will be set up at the side of the stage. It will be manned by Sam Rockwell in his Confessions of a Dangerous Mind getup, and he will have the ability to gong unfunny, sappy, or overlong segments off the stage. He will also be used to mark the end of the drum solo when the orchestra plays Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla", because all awards shows would be improved by an orchestral rendition of Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla".All future hosts will need to first host either the Razzies, the Independent Spirit Awards, or the awards banquet for the Greater Raleigh Area Little League before being tapped to host the Oscars, simply to demonstrate they can handle a rough crowd.A checklist of appropriate people to thank will appear onscreen during each winner's acceptance speech. This will include spouse/family, agent, appropriate coworkers, and God. The appropriate boxes will be ticked off onscreen during the course of the speech. Failure to check off a box will result in an electric shock; the winner who nails all of the boxes fastest gets to make the ceremonial "Abe Vigoda's not dead?" joke at the next Friar's Club Roast.Abe Vigoda gets an Oscar every year, because damnit, he deserves one.

Anthology Alert!

 Night-Mantled: The Best of Wily Writers vol 1 is now available on Amazon. My story "Small Cold Things" is in it, but that shouldn't scare you off - there's also work from Lisa Morton, Jennifer Brozek, Mark Worthen, Ripley Patton and other illustrious scribbly types that's well worth the read. Check it out!

New Storytellers Unplugged Post Is Up

and in this one, I get all ranty.

Yeah, yeah, like that's new. I know.

What I Did Last Sunday

 This is what I did Sunday night: went to An Evening With Master Chefs, a fundraiser for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. My sister Marla, who is ridiculously talented at this sort of thing, works for the foundation as an events director (I think - she'll correct me if I got it wrong). Her husband, Ian, is the Executive Chef for the Urban Food Group, and was one of the Master Chefs in question. (his course was chicken agnolotti with braised kale and other goodies, IIRC. Tried to livetweet the menu but everything on it was way more than 140 characters). It was, in no particular order, a lovely evening, a successful fundraiser, a hell of a meal, and a pleasant reminder that my sister and her husband are insanely talented folks.

Part of the evening was an auction, where a piece of art by a young man fighting the disease was auctioned off. The bidding was, in a word, raucous. Later, he and his family spoke - eloquently, movingly. His older brothers talked about the frustration of not being able to protect him from this, and about the usual big-brother, kid-brother stuff - like playing video games.

Later on, I found myself standing next to the boys as the evening broke up. I spoke to the youngest, gave him my card, and told him that if his parents thought it was OK, he should write to me and I'd hook him up with some games. I saw him later, standing next to his dad. He was turning my card over and over in his hands and grinning. Grinning a whole lot.

I occasionally joke about how my job ensures that I'm a rock star at bar mitzvahs everywhere. I also, when not joking, will occasionally note that there's a lot about this job that's hard. There's a lot of long hours, a lot of frustration. A lot of time away from home and late nights and all that sort of good stuff, and God knows I'm one of the lucky ones in this field.

But it's also the sort of job that can put a smile that big on that young man's face, and I can think of very few other professions I might hold that would do that.

Library Day

Friday I'm going to be speaking at the Wake County Public Library staff development day as part of a panel with four other writers. This makes me happy, not because I am particularly ecstatic over doing panels, but rather because I love libraries. In high school, I spent a couple of years as the volunteer gofer at our synagogue library; when other kids were hanging out during break between Monday night classes, I was shelving books. I actually laughed at the "Conan the Librarian" bit in UHF : Don't you know the Dewey Decimal System? And summers during elementary school meant a lot of riding my bike over to the East Cheltenham Library (the newer building in one of the old elementary schools, not the old one that showed up in the index of weird places in Loren Coleman's revised edition of Mysterious America . I am sad to report that the building in question was torn down long ago) and taking out as many books as I could handle; I think the record for one load was 18, and the book on the top of that stack was a prose translation of the Iliad. 

Good memories, good times.

So, speaking at a library? A no-brainer. Long may they loan.